The Beauties

Decades ago, I must have read Chekhov’s “The Beauties” in the midst of Constance Garnett’s multivolume translations, but I didn’t remember it when I recently started reading “Красавицы” in a pocket-sized Russian collection of his stories. It seemed to me such an unusually personal and essay-like piece by Chekhov.

In 1888, Chekhov, 28, had had a slow year of story-writing, comparatively speaking. (Only eight published short stories that year, after, astoundingly, 53 in 1877 and 64 in 1886.) In the second week of September he thought up “The Beauties” and dashed it off in a few days, writing his brother Alexander on the 15th: “It’s a little unimportant subject, but I’ve started the business and sent it in the form of short sketch to Новое Время (“New Time”), where I’m up to my ears in debt.” “Красавицы” appeared on September 21, and soon after, Chekhov’s cousin Georgy wrote to tell him it reminded him of his own trip with their grandfather on that route.

 In 1894 Chekhov revised “The Beauties” for a book of stories, Между Прочим (“By the Way”), and revised it again when he was gathering his work for a collected edition in 1899-1901. Its first translation was into German, in 1902.

I started translating “The Beauties” because it seemed so immediate and I was sure none of my friends knew of it; otherwise why wouldn’t they have raved about it, as I now wanted to? Though I was and am only an amateur translator, I was unspooling it from the Russian in long easy pulls; it unraveled onto the paper like homemade pasta. It didn’t feel as if it were eluding me the way Chekhov’s “A Misfortune” once had.* When I rediscovered Garnett’s translation in her volume of Chekhov’s The Schoolmistress and Other Stories, I was vain enough to like my version better.

And I thought, fine, besides her translation, published in 1921, there would now be a second, mine. But it turns out that there are other translations, including one even before Garnett’s entitled “Two Beautiful Girls,” by Marian Fell in 1915. Then there was Ronald Hingley’s, from 1977, and finally there’s the most excellent version by Nicolas Pasternak Slater in The Beauties, in Pushkin Press’s neat and dandy “Essential Stories” edition (2017). Slater (nephew of Boris Pasternak) named his whole collection after it! So the story has some deserved renown. V. S. Pritchett and W. H. Bruford, in their appreciative studies of Chekhov, called it a “prose-poem,” but it shouldn’t be fluffed or translated in that fashion; it’s as hard and sharp as diamonds. The novelist Philip Pullman describes it in a way that Chekhov might have liked: “it’s a story in which nothing happens, twice.”

Because I enjoy seeing artists’ revisions, I have consulted the 1977 30-volume Russian edition of Chekhov’s complete works and included as footnotes his two longest deletions from the original journal publication. Most of the other 39 changes he made to the story were of only a few words. Chekhov, an artist of efficiency, who packed into short stories what others can barely gather into novels, almost only deleted.

– Bob Blaisdell

I.

I remember when I was still in high school in the fifth or sixth level, I traveled with my grandfather from the village of Bolshaya Krepkaya in the Don region to Rostov-on-Don. It was a sultry, oppressive, boring August day. Out of the heat and dryness, a scorching wind drove a cloud of dust to meet us, gluing our eyes together, parching our mouths. You didn’t want to look around or speak or think, and when the drowsy driver, the Ukrainian Karpo, waving at the horse, lashed my peaked cap with his whip, I did not protest or let out a sound, but only roused up from a half-sleep and despondently and meekly looked in the distance to see if I could glimpse the village through the dust. We stopped to feed the horses in the big Armenian village of Bakhchi-Salakh, at a rich Armenian’s my grandfather knew.

Never in my life have I seen such a caricature of an Armenian. Picture a small, close-cut head with bushy, low-hanging brows, a hawk-nose with a long, gray moustache and a wide mouth, from which jutted out the long cherrywood mouthpiece of a Turkish pipe. This little head was awkwardly stuck atop a lean, humpbacked body, dressed in a fantastic costume: a short, red jacket and wide, bright-blue, loose trousers. This figure walked legs spread apart and shuffling in his slippers; and he spoke without taking the pipe out of his mouth, holding himself apart with pure Armenian dignity: not smiling, his eyes bulging, and trying to give his guests as little attention as possible.

In the Armenian’s rooms there was neither a breeze nor dust, but it was for all that as unpleasant, stuffy and dreary as on the steppes or along the road. I remember, dusty and worn out by the heat, I sat in the corner on a green chest. The unpainted wooden walls, furniture and ochre-stained floors gave off the smells of dry, sun-baked wood. No matter where you looked, there were flies, flies, flies.

In low voices, Grandfather and the Armenian spoke about pasturing, manure, sheep… I knew that the samovar would take a whole hour to heat up, that Grandfather would drink tea for at least an hour, that then he would lie down and sleep two or three hours, and that I had a quarter of a day of anticipating leaving, after which there would again be the heat, dust, and jolting roads. Listening to the muttering of the two voices, it began to seem to me that I had for a long, long time been watching the Armenian, the cupboard with dishes, the flies, the windows, through which beat the hot sun, and that I would cease watching them only in the very distant future, and a hatred for the steppes, the sun and the flies overwhelmed me.

A Ukrainian woman in a kerchief brought in a tray of dishes, and then a samovar. The Armenian unhurriedly went into the entryway and called out: “Mashya! Come in and pour the tea! Where are you? Mashya!”

Hurried steps were heard, and into the room came a girl of about sixteen in a simple cotton dress and white kerchief. Washing off the dishes and pouring the tea, she stood with her back to me, and I only noticed that she was thin at the waist, barefoot, and that her little heels were naked under her loose, tied-at-the-ankles trousers.

Our host invited me to drink tea. Sitting at the table, I looked in the girl’s face as she gave me the glass, and I suddenly felt a breeze run through my soul and blow away all the day’s impressions of boredom and dust. I saw the enchanting features of the most beautiful of faces I have ever encountered in real life or in dreams. Before me stood a beauty and I understood this from a glance in the same way I understand lightning.

I am prepared to swear that Masha, or Mashya, as her father called her, was a genuine beauty, but I can’t prove this. Sometimes it happens that clouds huddle in a disorderly way on the horizon and the sun, hiding behind them, paints them and the sky in all the colors: purple, orange, gold, violet, muddy-pink; one little cloud resembles a monk, another a fish, a third a Turk in a turban. The sunset, having enveloped three clouds, shines on the church-cross, on the windows of the manor house, reflects in the river and pools, flickers on the trees; far away against a distant sunsetting background, a flock of wild ducks flies somewhere to spend the night… And a herder-boy driving his cows, a surveyor going in his carriage across a dam, and landowners out strolling – everyone looks at the sunset and every last one finds it terribly beautiful, but no one knows or can say what its beauty consists of.

I was not alone in finding the Armenian girl beautiful. My grandfather, a gruff old man of eighty, indifferent to women and the beauties of nature, tenderly gazed at Masha for a whole minute and asked, “This is your daughter, Avet Nazarych?”

“Yes, she’s my daughter,” answered our host.

“A fine young lady,” praised grandfather.

An artist might call the Armenian girl’s beauty classical and severe. It was just that sort of beauty, the contemplation of which, from God knows where, inspires in you the conviction that you are seeing the exactly right features, that the hair, eyes, nose, mouth, neck, chest and every single movement of a young body have been brought together in one complete harmonious accord in which nature has not made a single mistake in the smallest detail; it seems to you the ideal of a beautiful woman must have such a nose as Masha has, straight, with a small crook, just such dark big eyes, just such long lashes, just such a listless look, that her black, curly hair and brows go just right with the delicate fair forehead and cheeks, as green reeds do in a quiet stream; Masha’s white neck and youthful chest are barely developed, but to sculpt them successfully, it seems you would need to command the most tremendous creative talent. You look, and little by little comes to you the desire to say to Masha something unusually pleasant, sincere, beautiful, as beautiful as she herself is.

At first I was hurt and ashamed that Masha did not turn any attention at all to me and looked down the whole time; some kind of special atmosphere, it seemed to me, happy and proud, separated her from me and jealously hid her from my glances.

“It’s because,” I thought, “I’m completely dusty and sunburned – that I’m still a boy.”

But then little by little I forgot about myself and completely surrendered myself to the consciousness of beauty. I no longer remembered about the steppes’ boredom, about the dust, no longer heard the buzz of the flies or took in the taste of the tea, and only felt that across the table from me stood a beautiful girl.

I was conscious of this beauty in a strange way. There was neither desire nor excitement, and Masha did not stir pleasure but a heavy, although pleasant, sadness in me. This sadness was vague, hazy, like a dream. Somehow I felt sorry for myself, and for my grandfather, for the Armenian and even for the Armenian girl. It felt as if we four had lost something important and necessary for life, which we would never again find. Grandfather also became sad. He spoke no more about threshing or sheep but was silent and pensively looked at Masha.

After tea Grandfather lay down to sleep, and I left the house and sat on the porch. The house, like all houses in Bakhchi-Salakh, stood on an exposed sunny place; there were no trees, no awnings, no shade. The Armenian’s big yard, overgrown with pigweed and mallow, was, despite the strong heat, lively and bright. Over one of the low wattle fences that intersected the big yard here and there, threshing was going on. Twelve horses, harnessed in a row and turning in one long radius, ran round a post driven into the very middle of the threshing floor. Alongside walked a Ukrainian in a long jacket and wide pants, cracking a whip and crying out in a tone that suggested he wanted to taunt the horses and brag of his power over them.

“Yah! You cursed ones! Yah! Cholera take you! – Afraid?”

The horses – reddish-brown, white and spotted – not understanding why they were being made to run around in circles in one place and stamp wheat-straw, reluctantly ran at their utmost strength and, affronted, flicked their tails. From under their hooves a wind raised whole clouds of golden chaff and carried it far beyond the fence. Around the tall, fresh hayricks, women bustled with rakes, and carts moved along; beyond the hayricks in another yard, another dozen such horses ran around another post, and another identical Ukrainian cracked his whip and jeered at his horses.

The steps I was sitting on were hot; sap oozed from the thin hand-rails and window frames; under the steps and under the shutters in the strips of shadow red bugs huddled together. The sun baked me on the head and on the chest and on my back, but I did not mind this and only sensed how, behind me on the porch, and in the rooms on the plank floor, bare feet were pattering. Fetching away the tea dishes, Masha ran down the steps, making a breeze on me, and like a bird, she was flying to a small sooty outbuilding, probably a kitchen, from which came the smell of roast lamb and the sounds of an angry Armenian conversation. She disappeared into the dark doorway and on the threshold there appeared, instead of her, an old bent Armenian woman with a red face and in green trousers. The old woman was angry and was scolding somebody. Soon, on the threshold, Masha appeared, reddened from the kitchen heat, with a big loaf of black bread on her shoulder. Beautifully bending under the heavy bread, she ran through the yard to the threshing-floor; she hopped over the fence and, plunging into the cloud of golden chaff, she disappeared beyond the carts. The Ukrainian who was driving the horses lowered his lash, went quiet, and for a minute silently looked towards the carts, and then, when the Armenian girl again flitted by, around the horses, and hopped across the fence, he followed her with his eyes and cried out at the horses in such a tone as if he were angry:

“To hell with you, you evil ones!”

And the whole time then I listened to her never-stopping bare feet; I saw how, with a serious, anxious face, she rushed through the yard. She ran now down the steps, enveloping me in a breeze; now into the kitchen, now to the threshing floor, now beyond the gates, and I was barely able to turn my head to keep up with her.

The more often she flashed before my eyes with her beauty, the stronger became my sadness. I was sorry for myself, for her, for the Ukrainian, who sadly followed her with his glance every time she ran through the cloud of chaff to the carts. Whether I envied her beauty or I pitied myself that the girl wasn’t mine and never would be, and that I, for her, was a stranger, or that I vaguely felt that her rare beauty was an accident and not a necessity and, like everything on earth, not long-lasting, or whether my sadness was the special feeling excited by the contemplation of supreme beauty, God knows.

Hours of waiting passed by unnoticed. It seemed to me that I had not had enough time to look at Masha when Karpo rode down to the river and bathed the horse and now began to harness it. The wet horse snorted with pleasure and knocked its hooves against the shafts. Karpo cried at her, “Back – back!” Grandfather woke up.

Masha opened the creaking gates for us. We sat down in the cart and left the yard. We went in silence, as if angry at one another.

When in two or three hours Rostov and Nakhichevan appeared in the distance, Karpo, having been silent the whole time, quickly looked around and said, “What a fine one, the Armenian’s girl!” and he gave the horse a lash.

II.

Another time, having become a university student, I was on the railroad going south. It was May. At one of the stations, I think between Belgorod and Kharkov, I got out of the carriage to take a stroll along the platform.

Evening shadows already lay on the station garden, on the platform and on the fields. The train station blocked the sunset, but as the breezy puffs of smoke coming from the engine were painted in tender pink light, it was apparent that the sun had not yet vanished.

Walking up and down the platform, I noticed that the majority of the strolling passengers went and stood only around one second-class carriage, and with such expressions as if in this carriage sat some famous person. In the midst of the curious whom I encountered near this carriage, I found my fellow-traveler, an artillery officer: young, smart, warm and sympathetic, as everyone is whom one gets to know on the road by chance and for not too long.

“What are you looking at there?” I asked.

He didn’t answer and only pointed out to me with his eyes a female figure. It was a very young girl, seventeen or eighteen, dressed in Russian style, with an uncovered head and with a little cape carelessly thrown over one shoulder. She was not a passenger, but must have been a daughter or sister of the stationmaster. She stood near the carriage window and was speaking with some elderly female passenger. Before I had time to realize what I was seeing, I was overcome suddenly by the feeling that I had once experienced in the Armenian village.

The girl was a remarkable beauty, and as to this neither I nor any of those together with me who looked at her had any doubts.

If, as is the custom, her appearance was described bit by bit, what was really beautiful about her was only her blond, wavy, thick hair, let loose and with a black ribbon tied up on her head; all the rest was either irregular or just very ordinary. Whether from her particular manner of coquetting or from being nearsighted, her eyes were scrunched up, her nose was uncertainly turned up, she had a small mouth, a weak profile vapidly drawn, shoulders slender for her age, but nonetheless the girl produced the impression of genuine beauty, and looking at her I was convinced that the Russian face, in order to seem beautiful, does not need to have strictly correct features, and besides, if the girl instead of a tilted nose presented a different one – correct and flawless in form like the Armenian girl’s – it seemed to me that all the charm of her face would have been lost.

Standing by the window and conversing, the girl, shivering from the evening dampness, occasionally looked around at us, now standing with hands on her hips, now raising her hands to her head in order to fix her hair; she spoke, laughed. She depicted on her face now amazement, now horror, and I don’t remember that at any instant her body and face were at peace; the whole secret and magic of her beauty was contained especially in those little, unceasing, elegant movements: in her smile, in the play of her face, in her quick glances at us, in the blend of delicate grace of those movements with youthfulness and freshness and the frankness of the sounds of her laughter and voice, and with that fragility that we so love in children, in birds, in young deer and young trees.

This was the butterfly-like beauty of waltzing, fluttering through a garden, laughter, joyousness; it does not get tied up by serious thoughts, sadness and repose, and it seemed only a good wind would be needed to rush along the platform or for it to rain in order for the fragile body to fade suddenly and her capricious beauty to scatter like pollen.

“Just so,” the officer muttered with a sigh when after the second bell we were setting off for our carriage.

But what that “Just so” meant I won’t undertake to say. Perhaps he was sad and didn’t want to leave the beauty and the spring evening to go inside the stuffy carriage or, perhaps, like me, he was unaccountably sorry for the beauty, for himself and me, for all the passengers, who listlessly, reluctantly wandered back to our carriages. As we walked past the station window, a pale, red-headed telegrapher with high curls and a washed-out, broad-cheeked face was sitting behind the apparatus, and the officer sighed and said, “I’ll bet this telegrapher is in love with that pretty thing. To live in the country, under one roof with such an ethereal creature and not fall in love – that’s beyond the strength of anyone. But, my friend, what a misfortune, what kind of mockery is it to be a hunched, ragged, dull, respectable, and not-stupid person, and be in love with this stupid, pretty girl who pays you no attention! Or even worse, imagine that this telegrapher is in love and married, and that his wife is as hunched, ragged, and respectable a person as he is himself – torture!”

Near our carriage, leaning on his elbows on the railing of the platform, stood the conductor looking towards where the beauty stood, and his haggard, wrinkled, unpleasantly meaty face, weary from sleepless nights and the jostling carriage, expressed a tenderness and the deepest sadness, as if in the girl he saw his youth, happiness, his sobriety, purity, wife and children, as if he were repenting and felt with his whole existence that this girl was not his, and that for him, the happiness of an ordinary human passenger, due to his premature old age, uncouthness and fat face, was as far away as heaven.

The third bell struck, whistles blew, and the train lazily started off. Through our windows first of all flitted by the conductor, the station-master, and then the garden and the beauty with her odd, sly, childish smile.

Sticking my head out and looking back, I saw how she, following the train with her eyes, proceeded along the platform past the window where the telegrapher was sitting; she fixed her hair and ran into the garden. The station no longer shut off the west, the countryside was open, but the sun had already set, and the black puffs of smoke drifted over the green velvety crops. It was sad: in the spring air, in the darkening sky, and in the carriage.

Our conductor entered the carriage and began lighting the candles.